Diabetes

DIABETES: LIFE SENTENCE OR NOT?Based on the groundbreaking findings of The China Study

The Caribbean Healthworks Project

What Are the Numbers?

In the eight years from 1990 to 1998, the incidence of diabetes has increased 33%.

One-third of those people with diabetes don’t even know that they have it yet.

What Exactly Happens?

In normal metabolism – we eat food The food is digested and the carbohydrate

part is broken down into simple sugars, much of what is glucose

Insulin, acting like an usher, opens doors for glucose into different cells for a variety of purposes. Some of the glucose is converted to short-term energy for immediate cell use, and some is stored as long-term energy (fat) for later use.

But In Diabetics Something Happens

As a person develops diabetes, this metabolic process collapses

Cannot produce adequate insulin because the insulin producing cells of their pancreas have been destroyed.This is the result of the body attacking itself, making Type 1 diabetes an autoimmune disease.

Type 1 Diabetics

Can produce insulin, but the insulin doesn’t do it’s job.This is called insulin resistance, which means that once the insulin starts “giving orders” to dispatch the blood sugar, the body doesn’t pay attention. The insulin is rendered ineffective and the blood sugar is not metabolized properly.

Type 2 Diabetics

Breaking It DownAlmost all cases are either Type 1 or Type 2

Develops in children and adolescents

Sometimes referred to as juvenile-onset diabetes

Accounts for 5% to 10% of all diabetes cases

Type 1

Type 2 – Or Adult Onset

Accounts for 90% to 95% of all cases

Used to occur primarily in adults age forty and up, and thus was called adult onset diabetes

But because up to 45% of new diabetes cases in children are Type 2 diabetes, the age specific names are being dropped

Type 2 DiabetesAdult Onset Has Been Dropped

Diabetes is often detected by a rise in blood sugar to dangerous levels.In fact diabetes is often diagnosed by the observation of elevated blood sugar levels, or it’s “spillage” into urine.

How Is It Often Diagnosed?

Long Term Health Risks

When proper glucose metabolism is disrupted a long list of possible conditions can develop.

Heart Disease 2-4 Times the risk of death from heart diseaseStroke

2-3 times the risk of strokeHigh Blood Pressure

Over 70% of people with diabetes have high blood pressure

Blindness Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in

adults

Diabetes Complications

Kidney Disease- Diabetes is the leading cause of end-stage

kidney disease.- Over 100,000 diabetics underwent dialysis

or kidney transplantation in 1999.Nervous System Disease

- 60% to 70% of diabetics suffer mild to severe nervous system damageAmputations

- Over 60% of all lower limb amputations occur with diabetics

More Diabetes Complications

Pregnancy ComplicationsIncreased Susceptibility to Other IllnessesDeath

& More Diabetes Complications

What Does Current Science Say? Modern drugs and surgery offer no cure

for diabetes

What About Drug Treatments? At best, drugs allow diabetics to

maintain a reasonably function lifestyle, but these drugs will never treat the cause of the disease

As a result, diabetics face a lifetime of drugs and medications, making diabetes an enormously costly disease

According to US figures, the economic toll per year is $130 billion dollars

What is the Part You Don’t Hear? Like most chronic diseases, diabetes

shows up more often in some parts of the world than others

This has been known for hundreds of years

It is also well documented that those populations with low rates of diabetes eat different diets than those populations with high rates of diabetes

Is that just a coincidence?

Putting It All Together

About 70 years ago, H.P. Himsworth compiled all the existing research in a report comparing diets and diabetes rates in six countries.

He found that some cultures were consuming high fat diets, while others had diets high in carbohydrates.

These fat vs. carbohydrate consumption patters were the result of animal vs. plant food consumption.

Different Diets – Different Diabetes

USA

Holla

nd

Engl

and

and

Wal

es

Scot

land

Italy

Japa

n0

20

40

60

80

Diets and Diabetes Rates, Circa 1925

% Fat% CarbohydratesDiabetes

As carbohydrate intake goes up and fat intake goes down, the number of deaths from diabetes plummets from 20.4 to 2.9 per 100,000 people!!

The Verdict?A high carbohydrate, low-fat diet – a plant based diet – may help to prevent diabetes.

The Result

A Re-examination (30 years later) After examining four countries from

Southeast Asia and South America – researchers found that high carbohydrate diets were linked to low rates of diabetes.

Researchers noted that the country with the highest rate of diabetes, Uruguay – had a diet that was “typically Western” in character, being high in calories, animal protein, total fat and animal fat.

The Findings

Countries with low rates of diabetes used a diet that was “relatively low in protein (particularly animal protein), fat and animal fat.

A high proportion of the calories were derived from carbohydrates, particularly from rice.

Enlarging the Study

These same researchers enlarged their study to eleven countries though Central and South America and Asia.

Populations eating the most “Western’ type diet also had the highest cholesterol levels, which in turn was strongly associated with that rate of diabetes.

Now For A Remarkable Study

James Anderson, M.D. – one of the most prominent scientists studying diet and diabetes today.

One of his studies examined the effects of a high-fiber, high carbohydrate, low-fat diet on twenty-five Type 1 diabetics and twenty-five Type 2 diabetics in a hospital setting.

This involved changing the diets of people who already had either full-blown Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes or mild diabetic symptoms

The Process

None of his fifty patients were overweight and all of them were taking insulin shots to control their blood sugar levels.

The First Part – Diet 1 for A Week His experimental diet consisted mostly

of whole plant foods and the equivalent of only a cold cut or two of meat a day

He put his patients on a conservative, American-style diet recommended by the American Diabetes Association for one week

The Numbers

He measured their Blood sugar levels Cholesterol levels Weight, and Medication requirements

The Switch that Changed It All And then switched them over to the

experimental “veggie” diet for three weeks.

And to put it mildly, the results were impressive

Results for Type 1 Diabetics

Remember, Type 1 diabetics cannot produce insulin

So, it is difficult to imagine any dietary change that might aid their predicament.

But…….

Here’s the News

After just three weeks… The type 1 diabetic patients were able to

lower their insulin medication by an average of 40%

Their blood sugar profiles improved dramatically, &

Their cholesterol levels dropped by 30%

Why This Is So Important

Remember that one of the dangers of being diabetic is the secondary outcomes – such as heart disease and stroke.

Lowering risk factors for those secondary outcomes by improving the cholesterol profile is almost as important as treating high blood sugar.

What About The Type 2 Diabetics?

Type 2 diabetics are more treatable because they haven’t incurred such extensive damage to their pancreas

So when Dr. Anderson’s Type 2 patients ate the high-fiber, low-fat diet, the results were even better...

Results for The Type 2s

Of the twenty-five Type 2 patients – twenty-four (24) were able to discontinue their insulin medication altogether!

That’s right - all but one were able to discontinue their insulin medication in a matter of weeks!

Any Other Studies?

The Pritkin CenterA group of scientists at the Pritkin

Center achieved equally spectacular results by prescribing a low-fat, plant-based diet and exercise to a group of diabetic patients. Of forty patients on medication at the start

of the program, thirty four were able to discontinue all medication after only twenty-six days.

Researchers found that increased fat intake was associated with an increased rate of Type 2 diabetes among 1,300 people in the San Luis valley in Colorado.

They said, “The findings support the hypothesis that high-fat, low carbohydrate diets are associated with the onset of non-insulin-dependent (Type 2) diabetes mellitus in humans.

Additional Studies

In the past twenty five years, the rate at which children in Japan contract Type 2 diabetes has more than tripled. Researchers note that consumption of animal protein and animal fat has drastically increased in the past fifty years.

Researchers say that this dietary shift, along with low exercise levels, might be to blame for this explosion of diabetes.

Another Study

In England and Wales the rate of diabetes markedly dropped from 1940 to 1950, largely during World War II when food consumption patters changed markedly. During the war and its aftermath, fiber and grain intake went up and fat intake went down. People ate “lower” on the food chain because national necessity. Around 1950, though, people gave up the grain based diets and returned to eating more fat, more sugar and less fiber.Sure enough, diabetes rates started going up.

And Another Study

Researchers studied 36,000 women in Iowa for six years. All were free of diabetes at the start of the study, but more than 1,100 cases of diabetes developed after six years.

The women who were least likely to get diabetes were those that ate the most whole grains and fiber – those whose diets contained the most carbohydrates (the complex kind found in whole foods).

And finally – Another Study

Anything Else?

These studies only scratch the surface of all the supporting research that has been done.

One scientific paper reviewed nine publications citing the use of high carbohydrate, high fiber diets and two more standard-carbohydrate, high fiber diets to treat diabetic patients.

All eleven studies resulted in improved blood sugar and cholesterol levels.

All of these findings support the idea that both across and within populations, high fiber, whole, plant-based foods protect against diabetes, and high-fat, high-protein, animal-based foods promote diabetes.

What Do These Studies Tell Us?

What Can We Learn?

That our diet of hot dogs, fried chicken, hamburgers and french fries is killing us.

Aren’t Lifestyle Changes Impractical?

Well how practical is it to have A Lifelong Condition… That can’t be cured by drugs or surgery That often leads to heart disease Stroke Blindness Or amputation? A condition that might require you to inject

insulin into your body everyday for the rest of your life

Going Deeper into Type 1- The Hidden News

Understanding Exactly What Happens In Type 1 Diabetes - the Immune System

attacks the pancreas cells responsible for producing insulin

The Young Ones Get It

This devastating, incurable disease strikes children, creating a painful and difficult experience for young families

What You Haven’t Heard

What most people don’t know, though, is that there is strong evidence that this disease is linked to diet and, more specifically, to dairy products.

The Link to Dairy Foods

The ability of cow’s milk protein to initiate Type 1 diabetes is well documented.

The Possible Initiation

The possible initiation goes like this A baby is not nursed long enough and is

fed cow’s milk protein, perhaps in an infant formula

The Process

The milk reaches the small intestine, where it is digested down to its amino acid parts

The Process

For some infants, cow’s milk in not fully digested, and small amino acid chains or fragments of the original protein remain in the intestine

More of the Process

These incompletely digested protein fragments may be absorbed into the blood

The Process

The immune system recognizes these fragments as foreign invaders and goes about destroying them

The Process

Unfortunately, some of the fragments look exactly the same as the cells of the pancreas that are responsible for making insulin

The Process

The immune system loses its ability to distinguish between the cow’s milk protein fragments and the pancreatic cells, and destroys them both, thereby eliminating the child’s ability to produce insulin

The Process

The infant becomes a Type 1 diabetic, and remains so for the rest of his or her life

The Process

This process boils down to a truly remarkable statement: cows milk may cause one of the most devastating diseases that can befall a child.

Direct Association

Cow’s milk consumption by children zero to fourteen years of age in twelve countries shows an almost perfect correlation with Type1 diabetes.

The greater the consumption of cow’s milk, the greater the prevalence of Type 1 diabetes.

The Numbers

In Finland, Type 1 diabetes is thirty-six times more common than in Japan.

Large amounts of cow’s milk products are consumed in Finland but very little is consumed in Japan.

What About Genetics?

The fact that Type 1 diabetes is increasing 3% every year is very strong evidence that genes are not solely responsible for this disease.

The Bottom Line

When the results of all the studies are combined (both genetically susceptible and not susceptible) we find that children weaned too early and fed cow’s milk have, on average, a 50-60% higher risk of Type 1 diabetes (1.5-1.6 times increased risk).

So What Can We Learn?

Type 2 Diabetics would do well to begin eating a high-carbohydrate, low fat diet – plant based diet in order to work towards freeing their bodies of the slavery of daily insulin consumption and all of the numerous possible complications.

And mothers and families need to know and understand the link between their babies being weaned too early and placed on cow’s milk and Type 1 diabetes.

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The information you have received today may take a few days to digest. Give yourself time to process it. Then we encourage you to pass it on. Many have never heard this information. Without you – they may never hear it. You could save a life.